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March 31, 2014

I'm so honored to be part of a #MyWritingProcessTour, where writers talk about their work. I don't know about you, but this fascinates me! Today, the fabulous Bonnie ZoBell is visiting here. Before we get started, a little about Bonnie, and make sure to pre-order her great new collection, What Happened Here.

Bonnie ZoBell lives in a casita in San Diego with her husband, dogs, cats, and many succulents. She is the author of What Happened Here and The Whack-Job Girls. She's a recipient of an NEA Fellowship and a notable story included in the storySouth Million Writers Award, among other awards, and her publications are numerous. Bonnie is one of those amazingly supportive writers with such subtle and moving work that I seek out every time I get a chance. If you don't know her, you should!

Bonnie ZoBell: My Writing Process:Blog Tour

Today I'm taking part in the #MyWritingProcessTour. It's so
interesting and instructive to see how other writers go about their work. I was
nominated by my friend, Susan Tepper, writer extraordinaire.
Be sure to get a copy of Susan's latest
book, The
Merrill Diaries, beautifully written and a thought-provoking romp
through the U.S. and parts of Europe.

The awkward part
about writing this blog post is that at the moment I don't have much of a
writing process because besides teaching, I'm in the process of birthing my
newest book, What Happened Here: a novella & stories.
I'm doing everything I can to ease her passage into the world, making sure
she's nurtured in every possible way, and giving her a good wholesome
introduction with the hope people will be as good to her as they've been to me.
At the moment, it's on pre-release and available only on my site, but she'll be
officially launched on May 3rd. What I'll do here is write about my
process when I'm writing. I warn you:
This process isn't entirely the healthiest for children and other living
things, in other words younger writers. Don't show this to your students.

What am I working on?

I've gone
back to an old novel, most recently called Animals
Voices—which I worked on for many years—because I think I've finally
figured out a solution to a problem I was having. The story starts out with
some young kids, the boy very curious about the unusual girl, after he gets
over her strangeness and the way all his friends make fun of her, because she
can communicate with animals. They grow up and marry and he is diagnosed with
AIDS in the early years. Communication is difficult when no one will
acknowledge the disease, probably even more so than communicating with owls.
Then I'm going to go back to another novel that I also spent years on called Bearded Women, about a woman who goes to
an electrologist because she's hirsute. There are class issues between her and
the electrologist, and it comes down to the main character needing to pluck
other parts of her persona as well.

How does my work differ from others of its
genre?

I'd call
what I write literary fiction, though I'd like to write more magical realism.
Oh, give me anything to read that contains beautiful language and a good story,
and I'll devour it. Perhaps mine differs because of my love of setting. I'm
thrilled going back to Animal Voices, getting
the chance to revisit the southern part of Del Mar in San Diego, land filled
with an estuary, all kinds of unique crawly life, and the magnificent Torrey
Pine trees. These gnarled pines grow crooked because they're on the bluffs
right above the ocean and therefore get a lot of strong winds. They'd be creepy
if they weren't so beautiful.

I'm no
minimalist, though I try to be as spare as I can. I like to think that
sometimes I'm successful at writing beautiful, in-depth descriptions that let
you see images in life in a unusual way without going overboard.

I'm
whimsical.

Why do I write what I do?

I write
because I love language and because writing fiction helps me figure out the
world. I'd be lost without it.

How does my writing process work?

This is the unhealthy
part: I'm a binge writer. I can go for days, weeks, even a couple of years and
do nothing but write. I ignore my husband and animals, my hair gets dirty, my
bills don't get paid, and I wear clothes that should have been recycled some
time ago if I get really passionate and possessed about what I'm writing. But
it takes a toll. So after doing this for a while, it's hard to allow myself to
go back there—there's so much deprivation. Unfortunately, the other side of it
is that I can also go for a long time not writing at all. That's where I am
right now while I promote and regroup from my collection. But I'm daydreaming
about those Torrey Pine trees

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AUDIOBOOK of Deep Down Things, Tamara Linse’s debut novel, read by P.J. Morgan. It is the emotionally riveting story of three siblings torn apart by a charismatic bullrider-turned-writer and the love that triumphs despite tragedy. From the death of her parents at sixteen, Maggie Jordan yearns for lost family, while sister CJ drowns in alcohol and brother Tibs withdraws. When Maggie and an idealistic young writer named Jackdaw fall in love, she is certain that she’s found what she’s looking for. As she helps him write a novel, she gets pregnant, and they marry. But after Maggie gives birth to a darling boy, Jes, she struggles to cope with Jes’s severe birth defect, while Jackdaw struggles to overcome writer’s block brought on by memories of his abusive father. Ambitious, but never seeming so, Deep Down Things may remind you of Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. Available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

Bio

Tamara Linse ~ writer, cogitator, recovering ranch girl ~ broke her collarbone at three, her leg at four, a horse at twelve, and her heart ever since. She is the author of the short story collection 'How to Be a Man' and the novel 'Deep Down Things.' She lives in Wyoming, where she writes short stories and novels. To support her writing habit, she also edits, freelances, and occasionally teaches. Contact her at tamara [at] tamaralinse.com.